Class Experiences - February 1st-7th, 2010

Behold! The mighty iPad!

http://news.softpedia.com/images/news2/IDC-Foresees-iPad-in-2010-Calls-the-Prediction-a-No-Brainer-2.jpg

With all of the features and capabilities of the iPod Touch, or less! And it's more expensive! And it's bigger!

...............And we want this why?

I can see Bruce's view of this as a game changer for schools, but this would be perhaps a proto-prototype for it. I wouldn't support this tech on principle, because it seems to be moving backwards. It's less functional and more expensive than a netbook!

RCA Video Recorders

We had a good deal of time to play with RCA Video Recorders, little gadgets that look something like this. They allowed video recording for about 30 minutes of footage at a fairly low definition. Still, I was very impressed with them. Lily Oliveria and I created a little movie which I'll be uploading on the Lessons and Information page and linking here soon. We're having some technical difficulties however, so our movie upload will be a week late.

The Video Recorders are a bit expensive to get for each student, but one has to wonder if the investment is worth just as much as a textbook investment, in an age where I see paper textbooks coming closer and closer to its demise. I'm in my 6th year of university education and I was personally amazed at how happy I was to run around shooting some random videos. It's no wonder YouTube is so popular. So why not put that in an educational context and have your students play with it? They could even upload their products onto YouTube. I've seen class projects popping up here and there on YouTube as I've searched for other educational materials, so it's not unheard of.

Class Readings - February 1st-7th, 2010

I have a bit of catching up to do, so although this is Week 4, I'm going to be commenting on Week 3 and 4 readings in one big go. Luckily, my points are relatively short because I've already touched on them in previous updates.

My Thoughts on Will Richardson's "I Don't Need Your Network..."

The time for kicking out cell phones, smartphones, iPods, and laptops from the classroom is over.
I had an interesting experience during Practicum. My Associate Teacher enforced my school's general policy: Zero tolerance for cell phones. Over the course of the Practicum she personally confiscated three or four cell phones. Other teachers were even more strict. Clearly, it was administration's forceful policy. What did I find weird? In our class, three students had laptops and brought them every day. No one said a word. I found that experience interesting, because we're seeing increasing convergance between the personal computer and the cell phone. PCs are old news (which makes me a geezer), now it's all about laptops, and netbooks! Meanwhile cell phones used to just call people, now that functional is almost outdated. Smartphones are really small laptops, and people in Las Vegas are touting Smartbooks, a fusion of netbook and smartphone. iPad Phone, anyone?
His article is well in line with my thoughts on Discovery Learning (not a new idea, just an effective one) in classrooms. Our kids have access to the information, we just need to make them learn how to use it, and discriminate it.

My Thoughts on Robert Andrew's "Don't Tell Your Parents: Schools Embrace MySpace"

Technology has no ethics, only people do. Nuclear power can be light for our homes or bombs, the choice is in the people, not the technology itself. I think the same holds true for less, um, groundshaking technologies like social networking.
I hadn't heard of Elgg, and its website didn't seem to load when I tried to investigate their link in the article. But as a general principle, I don't see why we can't use social networking in schools. Networking is about half the point of everything we do anyway, and often people can learn from (and to like) others based on what they could read. They might read things on profiles that shed new light on another's personality, something they would not have picked up otherwise. Social networking is good for both extroverts and introverts, because it's easier to share on a digital platform than many traditional methods. Granted, that sharing is not always as rewarding.
I would use social networking in the class, but I am a bit wary of Facebook. My only problem with it are its privacy issues, for one, and the fact that everyone already has a profile going on that, and I'm not sure if its a good idea to have them creating duplicates, or using their own. I'd have to call it on a case by case basis. I wonder if there are Apps on Facebook that could be used for educational purposes. I do know fundraising efforts or school projects could see a nice boon using Groups on Facebook.

My Thoughts on Format Factory and Movie Maker

I've used Movie Maker several times in my life, but I was reantiquated both with how limited and with how creative it can be. In just an hour or so I had a workable movie with Lily, that was 100x more watchable than the raw footage. In that respect, it's great, and it ships automatically with Windows OS.
On the other hand, it kept crashing, a lot. And it was limited in terms of where I could overlay audio onto video. I found adding sound effects exactly where I wanted very limited, which was a shame.
I think there might be room for overcoming the challenges of Movie Maker's limitations by combining it with use of Audacity. Audacity allows you to play with audio to very exacting amounts, so it's much better.
Format Factory is a MIRACLE! THANK YOU Bruce. I have been everywhere (except Format Factory's website, apparently) looking for a fairly universal format converter. Just the day before our class I was trying to convert FLV and MP4 files into something that wouldn't make Windows Media Player running on a Windows XP machine choke and die. Now, I have Format Factory on two of my three computers!